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FMR 64 Trafficking and smuggling 59

June 2020 www.fmreview.org/issue64

by the Government of National Accord and by want more funding for security services […]
militants alike, but now face greater barriers and best of all they want it off the books.” RSC
to leaving Libya given migration deals with Finally, deploying anti-terror policies
EU Member States. Indeed, entities funded in the fight against trafficking would
by the international community (namely ignore best practices advocated by scholars,
the Libyan Special Deterrent Forces, its practitioners and rights organisations,
coastguard, and Directorate for Countering particularly around livelihoods, education
Illegal Migration) have basically assumed and development provision, and around
control of the routes and now routinely victim-centred legal regimes. Access to
engage in trafficking – and to a greater degree safe and legal migration channels could
than did militants after the fall of Qaddafi. also alleviate vulnerability to trafficking on
irregular migration routes. Unfortunately, the
Avoiding unproductive policy pairings UNSC members who developed Resolution
A final question is whether the reference to 2388 are increasingly reliant on cooperation
a trafficking–terror finance nexus offers a with autocratic or authoritarian States as part
productive policy pairing – as was the case of migration control agendas – which foster
with the migration–development nexus. vulnerability to trafficking in the first place.
With the exception of one Nigerian security Craig Damian Smith
official, each of my respondents cautioned Craigdamian.smith@ryerson.ca
against using the kinds of militarised tactics Senior Research Associate in Migration
associated with counter-terrorism policy. Governance, Canada Excellence Research Chair
Several worried that treating trafficking in Migration and Integration, Ryerson University,
as a hard security issue risked creating Toronto www.ryerson.ca/cerc-migration/about/
unintended, adverse results for international
security and trafficking victims alike. 1. For a full list of resolutions and associated statements see
http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/2388
Military operations often destabilise 2. CTED (2019) Identifying and Exploring the Nexus Between Human
States and regions, foster resentment Trafficking, Terrorism, and Terror Financing
and extremism, and act as a catalyst for bit.ly/CTED-trafficking-terrorism-2019
displacement. They also create markets 3. The term ‘nexus’ implies a set of necessary causal relationships
between two or more phenomena. To take a prominent example,
for trafficking. For example, the Kosovo the migration–development nexus describes a series of mutually
Liberation Army and other armed groups reinforcing and complex causal relationships between different
in the former Yugoslavia trafficked women forms of development and (im)mobility.
and girls to meet demand among NATO and 4. Another issue with the purported nexus is the wide divergence
in identifying terror groups. The EU lists 21 entities as terror
UN forces. The same dynamics occur around organisations; the US State Department identifies 67 terrorist
international peacekeeping and humanitarian organisations; and the UN designates 82 entities as targets of
sanctions for terror and terror-financing activities. The differences
operations more broadly, which are often are the result of a rather broad divergence in designation criteria,
geared towards supressing extremism. interest groups, and political agendas.
There is ample evidence that securitised 5. Respondents drawn from international organisations including
migration policies are detrimental to UNODC, the International Organization for Migration, the UN,
UNHCR and OSCE.
international protection norms, the rights of 6. UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons
migrants, and State security. The pairing of www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/glotip.html; ILO Global
trafficking with terror allows autocratic and Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage
authoritarian regimes to leverage Western bit.ly/ILO-Estimates-Slavery-2017; US Department of State
Trafficking in Persons Report
preoccupation with Islamism and irregular www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/
migration in order to procure military aid 7. See also Gallagher A T (2017) ‘What’s Wrong with the Global
and to consolidate domestic political control. Slavery Index?’, Anti-Trafficking Review 8: 90–112
https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.20121786
As one senior post-conflict specialist asked: 8. Financial Action Task Force (2018) ‘Financial Flows from
“What does it tell you when an authoritarian Human Trafficking’ bit.ly/FATF-finance-trafficking-2018
government confirms to the Security Council 9. Financial Action Task Force (2015) ‘Financing of the Terrorist
that yes, indeed, the threat du jour is a big Organization Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)’, p13
problem in their territory? [It means] they bit.ly/FATF-finance-ISIL-2015